The leather of the book is soft and black as that of Grandma’s purse, brought west by horse and wagon, kept on mantel shelf and closet plank. The red dye on the edge has faded. The marriages recorded, births and deaths set down in pencil and in many inks and hands, with names and middle names and different dates and spellings scrawled in berry juice that looks like ancient blood. And blood is what the book’s about, the blood of sacrifice and blood of lamb, two testaments of blood, and blood of families set in names to show the course and merging branches, roots of fluid in your veins this moment. You open crackly pages think as film of river birch and read the law of blood and soar of blood in print of word and print of thumb.![]()
